The present disclosure relates generally to forensic authentication systems and methods.
Security printing, publishing, and imaging are important components of product differentiation, tracking and tracing, inspection, authenticating, forensics, as well as other anti-counterfeiting initiatives. Security printing involves providing each package with a unique ID, in the form of, for example, a smart label, deterrent or mark. Such unique identifiers may be overt and/or covert, and may contain authenticable data. Thus, such marks are particularly suitable for product track and trace, inspection, and authentication. Image based forensic services have been used to detect and aggregate counterfeits in a supply chain. These services are particularly useful when products do not contain specific security deterrents. In particular, these services analyze printing that has occurred on the product in order to investigate the authenticity. For some print technologies, however, there may be insufficient random variation in the print structure to provide a rich enough print signature to obtain the statistical accuracy required for forensic discrimination between printed documents.